Sloan Digital Sky Survey | 2016 May 25
For most of their lives, galaxies are lush environments for turning gas into stars. Until they aren’t.
[img3="An artist’s rendition of the galaxies Akira (right) and Tetsuo (left) in action. Akira’s gravity pulls Tetsuo’s gas into its central supermassive black hole, fueling winds that have the power to heat Akira’s gas. Because of the action of the black hole winds, Tetsuo’s donated gas is rendered inert, preventing a new cycle of star formation in Akira. (Credit: Kavli IPMU)"]http://web.ipmu.jp/press/201605-Akira/M ... -fig01.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]Over the last few billion years, a mysterious kind of “galactic warming” has turned huge numbers of galaxies into deserts devoid of fresh young stars. The puzzle for astronomers has been identifying the unknown process that keeps the gas in these dormant galaxies too hot and energetic to form stars.
Today, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) are announcing the discovery of a new class of galaxies called “red geysers” that harbor supermassive black holes with winds that have the power to keep dormant galaxies quiet. ...
The secret to capturing the whole story is the SDSS’s new component survey, Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA). “With MaNGA’s technological upgrade to the Sloan Foundation Telescope, we can make detailed maps of galaxies ten to a hundred times faster than we could just ten years ago,” says Renbin Yan of the University of Kentucky, a co-author of the study and MaNGA’s Survey Scientist. “Since MaNGA studies so many galaxies, our snapshots can reveal even the quickest changes happening in galaxies. And that’s how we found Akira.”
Cheung nicknamed this premier example of a red geyser galaxy “Akira” after the famous Japanese manga comic character, an homage to both the MaNGA survey and his home institution in Japan. Akira has a companion galaxy that Cheung called “Tetsuo” for another character in the same manga. Akira is pulling gas away from Tetsuo, which fuels Akira’s supermassive black hole winds. The winds driven by Tetsuo’s gas are the reason that Akira is currently a red geyser galaxy. Bundy came up with the name “red geyser” because these wind outbursts reminded him of the sporadic eruptions of a geyser and because the failure to form new stars leaves the galaxy with only red stars. ...
Supermassive Black Holes in 'Red Geyser' Galaxies Cause Galactic Warming
University of Kentucky | 2016 May 26
Supermassive Black Hole Winds Can Stop New Stars from Forming
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) | 2016 May 26
Suppressing Star Formation in Quiescent Galaxies with Supermassive Black Hole Winds - Edmond Cheung et al
- Nature 533(7604):504 (26 May 2016) DOI: 10.1038/nature18006